Anna Dressed in Blood - Kendare Blake [73]
“Cassio. Don’t you see? Everything’s changed!” She lets herself down to the ground, but the black eyes and writhing hair stay. “I won’t kill anyone. I never wanted to. But whatever this is, it’s what I am. I thought that it was the curse, and maybe it was, but—” She shakes her head. “I had to try to do this after you left. I had to know.” She looks me right in the eye. The inky dark seeps away, revealing the other Anna underneath. “The fight is over. I won. You made me win. I’m not two halves anymore. I know you must think it’s monstrous. But I feel—strong. I feel safe. Maybe I’m not making sense.”
It’s actually fairly easy to get. For someone who was murdered the way she was murdered, feeling safe is probably top priority.
“I get it,” I say softly. “The strength is what you hold on to. Kind of like me. When I walk through a haunted place with my athame in my hand, I feel strong. Untouchable. It’s heady. I don’t know if most people ever feel it.” I shuffle my feet. “And then I met you, and all that went down the shithole.”
She laughs.
“I come in all big and bad, and you use me for a game of handball.” I grin. “Makes a guy feel damn manly.”
She grins back. “It made me feel pretty manly.” Her smile falters. “You didn’t bring it with you today. Your knife. I can always feel it when it’s near.”
“No. Will took it. But I’ll get it back. It was my father’s; I’m not letting it go.” But then I wonder. “How do you feel it? What do you feel about it?”
“When I first saw you, I didn’t know what it was. It was something in my ears, something in my stomach, just a humming below the music. It’s powerful. And even though I knew it was meant to kill me, it drew me somehow. Then when your friend cut me—”
“He’s not my friend,” I say through my teeth. “Not really.”
“I could feel myself draining into it. Starting to go wherever it is that it sends us. But it was wrong. It has a will of its own. It wanted to be in your hand.”
“So it wouldn’t have killed you,” I say, relieved. I don’t want Will to be able to use my knife. I don’t care how childish that sounds. It’s my knife.
Anna turns away, thinking. “No, it would have killed me,” she says seriously. “Because it isn’t only tied to you. It’s tied to something else. Something dark. When I was bleeding, I could smell something. It reminded me a little of Elias’s pipe.”
I don’t know where the athame’s power comes from, and Gideon has never told me, if he knows. But if that power comes from something dark, then so be it. I use it for something good. As for the smell of Elias’s pipe …
“That was probably just something you were frightened of after watching yourself be murdered,” I say gently. “You know, like dreaming of zombies right after you watch Land of the Dead.”
“Land of the Dead? Is that what you dream about?” she asks. “Boy who kills ghosts for a living?”
“No. I dream about penguins doing bridge construction. Don’t ask why.”
She smiles and tucks her hair behind her ear. When she does I feel a pull somewhere deep in my chest. What am I doing? Why did I come here? I can barely remember.
Somewhere in the house, a door slams. Anna jumps. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her jump before. Her hair lifts up and starts to writhe. She’s like a cat arching its back and puffing its tail.
“What was that?” I ask.
She shakes her head. I can’t tell whether she’s embarrassed or frightened. It looks like both.
“Do you remember what I showed you in the basement?” she asks.
“The tower of dead bodies? No, that slipped my mind. Are you kidding me?”
She laughs nervously, a fake little twinkle.
“They’re still here,” she whispers.
My stomach takes this opportunity to wring itself out, and my feet shift underneath me without permission. The image of all those corpses is fresh in my mind. I can actually smell the green water and rot. The idea that they are now roaming through the house with wills of their own—which is what she’s implying—doesn